RHEA COUNTY RESIDENTS ATTEND COAL MINING MEETING; OVER 40 PEOPLE SPEAK

On April 26, 2012 a Public Meeting was held to allow citizens address their concerns about coal mining coming back to Rhea County after nearly 50 years. It was rather apparent that most of the people who attended the meeting was opposed to the mining of coal. Many concerns were expressed ranging from safety, tourism, traffic, road, the environment and many other concerns were vocally expressed by over 40 people.

Instead of writing some sort of "glossy" story with a "spin" in the fashion that suits me, I would rather take the high road and let the people see and hear what happened at the meeting, what was said at the meeting and who said it. The very small story the Herald-News dedicated to this meeting is an embarrassment to that newspaper. The headline had the word "COAL" in giant fonts where it could be argued that more black ink was within that one word than all the words in the small mentioning of this very important meeting.

This story will continue to evolve including excerpts of Herald-News editor, John Sprague saying "NO COMMENT" when he was asked for a comment about what a citizen said about the newspaper not telling the public anything for almost 3 years. The citizen was further angered that the newspaper never even mentioned the meeting in the Wednesday edition which was the edition the day BEFORE this meeting.

Below are embedded videos of portions of this meeting so as to show you what it was like and to get a feel of the atmosphere that was present. It was inspiring to see so many people come and advocate FOR or AGAINST the mining of coal in Rhea County.

Although the videos do not contain the entire meeting an audio sound recording file will be uploaded within 24 hours where over 130 minutes of dialog of the meeting in it's entirety will be available for you to hear. We firmly believe that if a company such as the Herald-news wants to play the part of a "newspaper of general circulation" then they are to be expected to live up to that duty. If we lose faith in our only newspaper of general circulation in Rhea County then we as the "public" either must remain in the dark and accept what is "spoon fed" to us or find some other source in which to obtain our information.

Either way, we need to be able to TRUST what we are told by our news sources and in our opinion, video and audio is the best source of "what really was said" and a reliable chronicle of events as they happen.